Pizza, diners and helicopters: A user’s guide to the 2025 New Jersey governor’s race

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — That perfect slice of Jersey pizza. Garden State puns about putting down roots. A whirlwind lesson on Navy helicopters.

And diners, lots of diners.

If you’re paying attention to New Jersey’s race for governor between Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill and Republican Jack Ciattarelli and looking for signs about the national mood on President Donald Trump’s agenda and how voters are reacting to Democrats’ messaging, getting to know the candidates might help decode things for you.

Both Sherrill and Ciattarelli emerged from competitive primaries and began the general election campaign Wednesday with efforts to unify their parties.

And they both found subtle (and overt) ways to broadcast their backgrounds to voters during the campaign: Ciattarelli turned up at a pizzeria — a classic wood-paneled joint — in his hometown with supporters casting him as a homegrown guy. Sherrill leans into her military service as a Navy helicopter pilot; her campaign signs have little choppers hovering above her name, for instance. They’re both campaigning at the state’s famed diners.

Here’s a closer look at each of the candidates.

New Jersey, my home

Giacchino “Jack” Ciattarelli (Chit-a-REL-ee), 63, has made being a lifelong New Jersey resident part of his campaign pitch and put his hometown of suburban Raritan at the center of some key campaign events. He conceded the close 2021 loss to Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy there and said he’d run again.

“New Jersey is my home. Always has been, always will be,” he said Tuesday. “Unfortunately New Jersey is broken. Make no mistake, it can be fixed.”

Four years after his defeat, he’s the GOP nominee again.

A Trump critic during his first run for governor in 2017, he’s come to support the president, who endorsed Ciattarelli as “ALL IN” on the MAGA agenda.

Ciattarelli attended Seton Hall University for undergraduate and graduate school, eventually getting an MBA at the South Orange school and becoming a certified public accountant. He founded Galen Publishing, which produces medical literature, and served in elected office at various levels. He was a member of the Raritan Borough Council before becoming a Somerset County Freeholder (now called commissioners). He was elected to the state Assembly in 2011 and served until 2018 after not seeking reelection because of his first run for governor.

The father of four adult children, Ciattarelli said in 2023 he and his longtime wife Melinda had separated.

‘Grow your dreams’

Rebecca Michelle “Mikie” Sherrill, 53, is a Montclair resident who first ran for political office in 2018, when she won in the long-time GOP-held 11th District in northern New Jersey’s wealthy suburbs.

She was born in northern Virginia and attended the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where she met her husband Jason Hedberg. Alluding to her later-in-life arrival to New Jersey, she invoked New Jersey’s Garden State nickname on primary night.

“This is where you plant your family and you grow your dreams,” she said.

Sherrill served for a decade in the Navy, piloting Sea King helicopters, an ever-present part of her story on the campaign trail. She attended Georgetown for law school after her military service and worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in the District of New Jersey.

She and her husband also have four children, and she’s put motherhood at the center of her campaign, frequently pointing to being the mom of four kids along with her military and prosecutorial experience. She was reelected to the U.S. House three times since her 2018 victory.

Hints about the general election

Even before voters settled the primary, Sherrill and Ciattarelli hinted at how the general election race could take shape.

In sparring over social media, Sherrill opposed the GOP-backed legislation in Congress that Republicans have been calling the “ Big Beautiful Bill,” while Ciattarelli talked up the benefits of its tax cuts.

Beauty, of course, is subjective. Sherrill said the bill would drive up costs and attempted to link Ciattarelli to health care and food assistance cuts.

On Tuesday she called him a “lackey” for Trump.

Ciattarelli jabbed Sherrill over opposing what would amount to tax cuts for many residents.

The tax cuts in the bill working its way through Congress are needed in New Jersey, he wrote, “thanks to Democrats making NJ the highest taxed state in America.”

Suggesting Republicans’ desire to link Sherrill to the term-limited Murphy, Ciattarelli called Sherrill “Phil Murphy 2.0” on Tuesday.

Purple New Jersey?

Election Day is Nov. 4. Democrats outnumber Republicans among registered voters, but independents are a significant chunk of the electorate.

While Democrats have had a long-time lock in presidential and Senate races, Republicans frequently break through in races for governor. Each of the last three Republican governors was reelected. Murphy became the first Democrat to win reelection in more than four decades in 2021.